Where Are They Now
Transcript
Today on this special edition of Peace Talks Radio, we follow up with five peace builders whose voices we first heard more than 10 years ago. To learn how time, patience, and persistence shaped their work.
(Clips from guests)
“In fact, I even had Kevin come to the classroom the year before last to talk about strategies that he developed and the kids found it really hard to believe that he had never hit another student”
“Now he emptied his gun and he goes and gets the book bag. Well see, I didn't know what was in the book bag, but first I didn't see it like that because he now sits in front of me. And pulls out all of these bullets. I had never seen bullets before.”
“We've developed a multimedia program for Iraqi youth, ages 14 to 18, to give these Iraqi kids a chance to express themselves and give them better choices.”
HOST: What happened next? What sustained them? Where are they now? Coming up today on Peace Talks Radio.
This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. Whether it's the search for inner peace, harmony in our closest relationships or understanding in our workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and beyond, we explore it here on Peace Talks Radio. From personal moments to global movements, we consider what it takes to build a more peaceful world.
I'm Jessica Ticktin. And today on this edition of Peace Talks Radio, we're looking back and looking forward by reconnecting with peace builders we first met many years ago. In a world where news moves fast and crises keep accelerating, it can be easy to forget the quieter, ongoing work of people who keep choosing peace every single day.
But peace is often slow work. It unfolds over time and the arc of how someone continues or evolves matters. So today we ask where are they now? More than a decade after they first joined us on this program, we checked back in with five voices who once helped shape our understanding of peace and nonviolent conflict resolution strategies.
We'll hear from Theo Dolan, who was working on digital peace building strategies at the US Institute of Peace from Antoinette t, whose compassionate and courage helped stop a school shooting in Atlanta. From Sarah and Kevin Malone, a mother and son, whose story helped us explore gentle, peaceful parenting, and from Valerie Kie of Laguna Pueblo, whose work continues to center indigenous education and cultural preservation.
Some of the work has shifted, some has deepened, all of it has something to teach us about what it means to keep showing up for peace, even when the headlines move on.
Sarah Malone: I came from a family where it was what dad said. That was it. There was no discussion. So as a young woman, I didn't really get to a place where I was able to ask myself, what do I want for myself?
What do I really need until I was 29? And um, that's really unfortunate. So I think that. If as a child is growing up, there's that process of discussion and give and take in allowing the child to have an opinion and give some ideas. Then by the time they are adolescents, they're ready to be able to make some of those choices and decisions.
HOST: That was Sarah Malone in 2003, one of the earliest voices we had on Peace Talks Radio at the time, she and her teenage son, Kevin, were exploring what peaceful parenting looked like in practice. Kevin was navigating a school culture where toughness was valued, and he developed his own quiet strategies for staying out of fights and keeping his cool.
Kevin Malone: Well, I, I went to a rural elementary school where, um, basically the only way you gained popularity was through physical combat and prevailing. I basically just found that anger towards my classmates. Over time, I realized that it wasn't constructive. So basically, I began to understand when I was angry and just shut it down immediately.
HOST: Two decades later, both Sarah and Kevin say those early lessons still shape their lives. Sarah Malone is now retired, but she continues to be a steady presence in her community. Kevin is a partner at a law firm in Washington, DC where he says the same emotional fluency his mother taught him has become the core of his professional success.
Kevin: To me, I think like the thing that actually impacted me more than. The dispute resolution stuff of responding to bullies that I do think about a lot that I think had a profound impact on me was, is less about how to handle disputes than more like foundational around the virtue of kindness. My mom did like a number of things that like really created that expectation for me and convinced me that that was.
It's gonna be like the basis of my personality. Even as a child, and that was 'cause she was the school social worker. So like she actually knew like what some of the kids in the most dire situations were going through, like in a confidential environment. And these were peers of mine. So it was like a very strange situation where your mother knows who the kids in your class are, who are being abused, who are being neglected, who are being traumatized, or have been.
Who are like in a rural, a very rural environment in New Mexico, like there's some kids going through some really, really hardcore stuff and so she would not divulge, I still, I remember two things. She would never say like, this person has had this happen to them. Like she would obviously never disclose confidential information to me, but what she would say is
You have to be really nice to that kid. She'd be like, like that kid may smell bad. That kid may not like dress well, but like he needs friends and you better be nice to that kid. It made me realize like from a very early age, like early elementary school, that like other people were carrying burdens that you could not see and that like you needed to like have that in your mind at all times so you could really, you could make things worse.
And then the other was that like she would. Regularly go to kids' houses to like bring them clothes or to bring them food or to check in on their family. And because like she was my mom and she was my ride home, like I had to go with her and she'd be like, you have to stay in the car. And so I would go to all of these like, really dilapidated places out in the rural New Mexico with just like junk everywhere. The house has got holes in the roof. You know, it's just like really grim circumstances. I would know that those kids were my peers in this school. And so like growing up in an environment where you're like forced to really confront inequity and the um, good fortune that you have.
I think really that shaped my, that shaped me more than the sort of bullying that I had to deal with later was just like, even before bullying became a thing like that, I was like already really well established and understanding the virtue of kindness.
Sarah Malone:To me, the most important thing was that he'd be a person who was ethical, caring, responsible. Yeah, peaceful when he was little and was at a grade school where there were a fair amount of number of bullies, he was put in the pickle a number of times where we said, use your words, uh, let's, you know, really try and find other ways to solve problems in terms of what path he chose that was less important to us than how he chose to live his life.
Kevin: I feel really like one of my greatest sources of contentment, I would say with my career and with my life is my sense that I have the sort of pride of my parents that I have fulfilled in some ways, the vision they had for being a peaceful like adult. I mostly feel that. The work that I'm doing is something I feel ethically is socially valuable, and that's like kind of the thing that I try to help with associates is to, to be able to build a private practice career that isn't toxic or meaningless, and that's not guaranteed in corporate law, you might say.
And one of my main lessons for associates I teach at the GW Law School now too, is if you enter the private practice field, if you care about this, you should make sure never to become an expert on something that evil people value a lot because you, they will pay you a lot to do things that are really problematic. And the way to avoid that is to choose what you become an expert in.
HOST: That was Sarah and Kevin Malone, mother and son, featured on one of our earliest Peace Talks radio programs back in 2003, reflecting on peaceful parenting, listening, patience, empathy.
Those are lessons that can shape a lifetime. Antoinette Tuff learned just how powerful they can be the day she found herself face to face with a man carrying an assault rifle into an elementary school.
Antoinette: He's now emptied his gun and he goes and gets the book bag. Well see. I didn't know what was in the book bag, but first I didn't see it like that.
Okay. He now sits in front of me and pulls out all of these bullets. I had never seen bullets before.
HOST: She stayed with a gunman face to face and met his rage with humanity. In that moment, she drew on a deep practice of presence, not force, and what emerged from that day wasn't only survival, it was a belief in emotional skill as prevention, and that belief carried forward.
Antoinette: I think what what stands out to me most is because after that incident, I started a nonprofit called Kids on the Move for Success. And so now I teach kids how to put a book in their hand and not a gun. And so that's one of the things that stands out to me. And then another thing that stands out to me is that I learned that the techniques that I used when the gunman helped me hostage was what I call now my tough tactics.
Which is compassion, confidence, and control. So I can say those are two things that I've learned out of this actual, um, could have been a tragedy, could have been an ordeal, but I, I would like to call it another chapter to my life. I just turned the pages.
HOST: She says The greatest lesson she learned was that compassion isn't passive.
It's powerful. The tools she used in crisis have now become tools.
Antoinette: What did I do that helped me to talk the gunman down to calm him down and to deescalate the situation. Like what was it that I did? And I realized all of that, that I showed him compassion. Um, we were pain, meaning pain that day.
And so I didn't look at him as a gunman. I looked at him as a human being. And so I knew that one day he's gonna be somebody's dad. He was always somebody's son and he was gonna be somebody's husband one day. So how do I allow him to be able to see. I see you, and how do I allow him to be able to know that I got confidence in you that we all gonna survive this?
Even though when he put the gun up to him and said, like this, we all going to die. So how do you go back and look at all that to be able to say. I'm in control of this. Those were the tough tactics that I used. And so today I go around to businesses teaching them, management team and employees how to have tough tactics in your business, what do you do to do that?
How do you go back and have the training? So whether it's a half a day training, whether they come in and do one of my memberships, how do you, how do I take my team and my business from feeling like we at rock bottom, there's no collaboration, there's no, you know, inclusion in the, in the building.
Everybody feels like they're just, you know. They're going this way, they're going that way. Nobody's listening. But how are you going to say that your voice matters? And I think for me, what helped me to survive that was that I like him to know that his voice mattered. Antoinette says that day, taught her to see the humanity in everyone, even in someone holding a gun.
HOST: Now she's helping others see that same humanity in themselves, especially the young people who are trying to find their way in a fearful world. When you talk with students or community leaders, what do you find resonates most about the idea of choosing peace over fear?
Antoinette: I think what I find out is, especially with my kids, because a lot of times we are in a situation now where kids are more suicidal than they've ever been.
They're trying to navigate life more than they ever have. I think when all these things came up with all the stuff that's going on in our life, I think sometimes we forgot that the babies were behind us. You know, and so you didn't look back. I gotta bring them up forward so that they can be in front of me so that I can see them and navigate them in the right direction.
And when we keep our children behind us, then we don't always navigate them in the right direction. So it becomes bodies moving without a head. And everybody, we will WBBs and hope they don't fall down. And so now when I'm realizing, when I'm in communities, like about scholarships to kids and. We just set up Community Day where we gave out scholarships to kids.
I have an afterschool program inside of Chick-fil-A and we're able to take those kids and make it into a small setting. And so we do reading and literacy. We've able to take them up one or two grade levels showing them what STEM is about and STEAM is about, but this actually giving them a actual eye outside of their community every day.
And so I've learned that when I do that, that my kids are able to say, I can do this. So right now I've been having kids that's coming to me. They've been with me since they were in kindergarten. They are now finishing college. Wow. And yes, they finished college and they come back. They help me with my programs that I'm doing.
They come back and come into my after school program. I do Christmas popups too. So every Christmas I give about toys to kids all over the world. They come in. We gave out over 500 toys and stuff, so I was able to take all of that in my community.
HOST: For Antoinette. Giving scholarships and hosting community events is just one part of the work. What she says she loves most is something smaller, more personal. The chance to see her students up close week after week as they grow into young leaders.
Antoinette: Um, I think the most favorite thing that I do with young people, I think it would be me being able to come over and let them see in my afterschool program.
So I would say the afterschool program would be my favorite because I'm able to touch them twice a week. I'm able to go in and just kind of see what they're doing, have hugs, you know, kids in Element School, they love to hug on you and I'm able to let them do things with their hands and bring in speakers and stuff like that.
So I think that was, that's one of the things I love and I started out in elementary school because most people don't, but I wanted to do in elementary because I can be able to have them now go into my Youth Trailblazers when they're in med school and high school, and then they come back to be community leaders.
HOST: On this edition of Peace Talks Radio, we're catching up with peace builders we first met years ago to hear what's changed, what's endured, and what their journeys can teach us today. The compassion that guided Antoinette t through crisis, that same instinct to prevent harm before it starts is also at the heart of Theo Dolan's work.
When we first met Theo back in 2011, he was using media and storytelling in Iraq to help young people see each other differently and to keep small conflicts from growing into violence.
Theo Dolan: Worked with Iraqi youth, Iraqi civil society and media members to develop a 30 minute documentary and a parallel social networking website to give these Iraqi kids a chance to express themselves and give them a way to make better choices so that they have a choice.
In front of them. That is not a negative one. The teenagers basically taking charge. They're in charge of the content. Both the documentary and the website are based on a curriculum that was developed to promote things like self-confidence, respect for diversity, citizenship, and that's the backbone of the whole project.
You can. From, from the beginning of the program when the 30 kids from around the country arrived for the competitions, they didn't know each other. They had never met Kurdish speaking kids before. And then at the end of the program, suddenly they're all exchanging phone numbers, they're exchanging emails, they've stayed online.
On the social networking site since then, which has, uh, more than tripled in membership. They brought their friends into it. It's meant to be entertaining, but also to put forward some of the goals that we outlined in the curriculum to spread the peace building message and to make it a local issue. These kids, when they participate in the competitions and the documentary will go home, and the hope is that there'll be active peace builders in their own communities.
HOST: That was Theo Dolan back in 2011 when he was working in Iraq as a program officer for the US Institute of Peace. His work centered on a difficult question, how can media be used to prevent violence rather than inflame it? Theo helped launch a youth reality series called Salam Shabab, bringing together teenagers from every part of Iraqi society to model teamwork and dialogue in front of the camera.
He also partnered with local journalists to identify counter messages of hate showing how storytelling itself can become a peace building tool.
Theo: So that one program that we likely discussed in 2011, which was the Iraq Peace Building TV show called Salam Shabab, that evolved into several other programs which I can talk about, including longstanding peace building radio drama in South Sudan.
We did a year of similar program in Somalia and we also started up a peace building radio drama in Afghanistan. We handed over to local partners and was running pretty consistently for more than 10 years, so it really evolved.
HOST: Over the next decade, Theo carried that same mission into conflict affected regions around the world through the US Agency for International Development when funding was cut for the US Institute of Peace and USAID.
During the Trump administration, Theo Dolan says he couldn't help but reflect on what was lost. Looking back, Theo says some of the most effective peace building work he's seen never made the news, and he laments the fact that the programs that quietly reduced violence or stopped crises before they reached the US went untold.
He wonders whether those organizations might have done a better job sharing the real impact of their peace building work.
Theo: The US military credited USIP for saving our soldiers' lives in Iraq through some of our programs. Um, and um, so I think sharing the human stories is really important because that's something that can draw on our shared identities.
Um, you know, US is a very diverse country and we have. All kinds of different backgrounds. I think to bring it home, I usually think about two examples. One is the point about how important our work is or was, is um, I worked with a lot of youth, for example, in East Africa, including to prevent violent extremism.
And so we would work with local youth, increase their agency and their sense of self-empowerment and identity so that they wouldn't be drawn into the sort of extremist circles and be recruited to be terrorists and, and therefore they would not reach our shores. Right. And making that connection, I think is really important because people don't think about that.
You know, they don't, they don't think about. What are the drivers that, what are the sort of push and pull factors that drive youth wherever they're from to, to take these sort of actions? Um, and, and I think that that's one example. Another one that's, that should be obvious to people is infectious diseases.
And we did a lot of work to, to address infectious disease outbreaks so that they wouldn't reach us here. You know, avian bird flu, Ebola, you name it. I mean, we are, we're working. With some really impressive public health people, including at the local level in various places to, to address these infectious diseases.
And why do you think they haven't gotten here? You know, to at the scale that they may reach other places, right? It should be obvious, but we weren't telling those stories.
HOST: Today, Theo Dolan is a senior advisor with BBC Media Action, helping Communities Strengthen Media, digital and AI literacy the next frontier in his lifelong effort to use communication as a bridge rather than a weapon.
Theo: So I've been working a lot in more recent years on digital and media literacy issues and um, and I think it takes a systemic approach. You know, we need to work at the institutional level through schools and in the us. I'm happy to say that there are more than 22 states that have media literacy laws, meaning that at the K through 12 levels, schools now have a mandate.
To integrate media literacy into the school systems and school curricula. So that's less than half, but it continues to increase, and that's a really positive thing because nothing is happening right now at the national level, the federal level, but at the state level it is happening. And that that's really a key piece of educating our kids not on what they should be.
Reading or watching, but how to consume media and information. And that's the key. It's not political. It's teaching them the skills so that they can make their own determinations about how they consume media and information. That's a really important distinction, but it al, it also takes people working at the community level.
For example, a lot of media literacy programs take place in local libraries. Which is brilliant. That's a great way to, to educate people of all different ages and backgrounds, and then also at the individual level. So those are the parts of the system, right? Individual, community, institutional, and individuals can do online learning.
There are all kinds of resources available. There are also very cool online games that that youth and adults can play to learn digital and media literacy skills online. So that's the approach.
HOST: What gives you hope right now for yourself, for peace building or for the next generation?
Theo: Well, I just came back from a conference where I was delivering a workshop on digital media media literacy at the, uh, international Association of Official Human Rights Agencies, and, and I heard some very inspiring speakers.
Who were representing these different human rights organizations from the city, state, and county level in the US but also from international places. And I think the most inspiring thing that that strikes me is just that the sort of solidarity building within coalitions and trying to be unified across these different diverse groups.
Because if we don't do that, then. Then we've already lost, you know, and leaving aside the political piece, I think on a community level, we've gotta come together. And I think, I, I talk to my kids about that all the time. If we have like-minded groups, let, there's still sometimes divisions within those like-minded groups and we have to overcome them.
And that's, that's how we can really come together and move forward, you know, conflict resolution and a whole host of other causes.
HOST: That was Theo Dolan reflecting on how the tools of media and technology can shape peace in a new generation. The same belief in education and connection also drives Valerie Kie, an indigenous educator, whose work helps young people see themselves and their communities reflected in what they learn.
When we first spoke with Valerie in 2015, she was teaching Native American literature to sixth graders in Albuquerque and serving on her Pueblo's education task force. Today, she's the Senior Director of Leadership Development for the NACA Inspired Schools Network, a coalition of schools rooted in indigenous values and community.
This next clip comes from Valerie's 2015 interview with Peace Talks Radio host Suzanne Kryder. At the time, Valerie reflected on her own experiences with racism.
Valerie Kie: Um, we were doing a summer institute in Houston and they had us group in, uh, groups of four. And with those, uh, two other girls besides me and A young white man who had, um, was from Boston I believe, or he went to Boston College, and I just remember he was very condescending. I know to a lot, to the people in our group. He, um, just would dominate conversations, you know, he would brag about where he went to college, this and that. And, um, you know, and I, I don't often raise my voice, you know, but I had to.
Had to tell him, you know what, just because I'm brown doesn't mean that I don't belong here. You know, I went to Stanford and you know, I made it through and whatever I have to say, it's just as good as what you have to say. So I think in a way it surprised him.
HOST: In that same 2015 conversation, Valerie also spoke about the deeper roots of that experience, the lasting impact of colonization, and how generations of indigenous people have had to fight to restore balance and voice in their communities.
Valerie: I call it colonization as well. A lot of what we're dealing with is the after effects of colonization, um, wars, boarding school, unfair treatment policies that have existed to terminate our people. And so I see historical trauma too. I see that a lot in my own family. Valerie, when you say colonization, what other conflicts come out of that for people today?
Indigenous people today in the us. Um, I think a lot of it has to do with just different interpretations when I think of things such as, um, the way our, our social structure, our government structures. Um, I'm from Laguna Pueblo and I think about how women have such an integral part or, or such an integral part of our culture.
You know, our clans, um, knowledge is passed through the mother. But you know, when the Spanish came, you know, and later of course, um, Mexican rule and the United States took over, I feel like women were pushed out. And so I see conflict in that area, how our traditional. The traditional roles of women have changed and trying to restore that.
HOST: A decade later, Valerie's still doing that restorative work, but now on a larger scale. After years in the classroom, she shifted her focus to language revitalization and cultural leadership through the NACA Inspired Schools network, where she's helping indigenous communities reconnect with their stories and their strength.
Valerie: I was teaching through 2016. Then I left the Native American Community Academy. I think part of it was just being burnt out from teaching. It's a lot. I so admire our teachers for everything they they do for students, and they're competing against technology in the classroom for sure. But I went to do some contract work for my Pueblo Laguna around language revitalization work, and gained a lot of information and I was also really immersed in our language, which is Caris. That was a really profound and just a journey for me. Those two years we were working with our tribal leadership to think about how can we revitalize our language, create more speakers? How can we have a more concerted effort across all our programs?
HOST: Valerie Kai is from the Pueblo of Laguna of all the hat she wears. Valerie is most proud to be a hockey mom to her teenage son. In the first part of this Peace Talks radio episode, “Where are they now”? We've heard how peace building often starts close to home through teaching young people to listen before reacting through media, that open space for dialogue instead of division through community projects that honor culture, language, and belonging.
And through moments when compassion is chosen over fear humanity over hatred. In part two, we'll return to these peace builders to see how their work has deepened over the years. Stories of strength, legacy, and hope still unfolding. Stay tuned. Thanks for listening.
MUSIC BREAK
HOST: This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin with part two of our special episode “Where are they now”? Over more than two decades, we've met people putting peace into practice in classrooms, communities, and conflict zones around the world.
In this series, we've gone back to some of them to ask what endured, how did their peace work and their lives change in the years since we first spoke earlier, we heard from Antoinette Tuff, Theo Dolan and Sarah and Kevin Malone. Now we continue with educator Valerie Kie. Valerie's work often bridges, indigenous and Western frameworks.
This next clip comes from our earlier conversation with Valerie. Nearly a decade ago. She was already questioning Western definitions of success and calling for a broader understanding of what it means to thrive. Here's what she said then:
Valerie: I think I would just be very open-minded and when you're dealing with an indigenous person, not to have, not to impose, I guess western ideals, especially when it comes to, to things like.
Western ideals of success I like for me, I really. Don't adhere to money is everything. Or you know you've made it when you've got a job, a nice house and you get to vacation here and there. To us, that's not success. Success to us is that you've given back. You know, success to us might be that maybe I didn't go to college and I stayed home to be a medicine person for my community.
I didn't go to college, but I'm a silversmith and I'm contributing in that way to my community. So success is very different for non-native people. Just to think. More broadly in terms of not all Western values fit every person.
HOST: When we last spoke with Valerie, she was teaching Native American literature in Albuquerque.
Today, she's helping a network of schools across the country lead with indigenous values, equity and wellness, transforming education itself into an act of peacemaking. Today that commitment has deepened. Valerie continues to weave peace building into education by helping teachers and leaders recognize how inherited systems shape our schools and how wellness and equity can restore what colonization, eroded.
Valerie: One of the things that we've also done and have really been thinking about is equity. Mm-hmm. And what does that look like? We, we actually have a position as of last year around equity and wellness in our work. And part of it is working with our staff, but also working with our schools. And when we do have our professional development, we do have equity and wellness piece.
Part of that has really been dismantling white supremacy characteristics. So like seeing that in our work where why are we operating with such a sense of urgency? Why does it always have to be black and white? So working through our own, like calling out where are those ways when I'm like really trying to be work towards perfectionism and that's not really serving me.
But also bringing that to our school leaders and bringing that to our teacher leaders and having them think about where does this show up in your school and how does it prevent you from making the gains in your work? And so for me, that is peacemaking and community building to really push against those systems.
I think, you know, having people be more awakened to those tendencies and how they operate in their lives professionally and personally, really helps to calm them. And the last thing I'll say is I have a son, a 14-year-old now who is in one of our. Work schools. I see the way he shows up outside of the classroom in his sports and his friend, and amongst his friend group.
And I, for me, I'm really seeing this notion of be a good relative, show up in him, be a good teammate, be, and I think that really matters. For our students, right? It's not about just solely academic achievement and I'm gonna get to the best college or super hyper-focused on my sports and be competitive and leave everybody else behind.
But it's really this notion of be a good relative. And I, and I'm really proud that I see that showing up in my own kid, and I'm hoping that's the same situation for the other students and other parents in that same school Community Sustaining peace takes that same patience and reflection at every level from institutions to families.
HOST: Back in 2003, Sarah and Kevin Malone joined us to talk about peaceful parenting.
Kevin Malone: Okay, well, I know that kids today, generally, I know that I feel this way, sometimes they feel that their world. And our experience with our friends and with youth today is something completely alien and separate from anything that our parents can relate to, which makes it very difficult for us to try to explain what we're, what's going on to our parents.
So we try to, from time to time, come up with a scenario that. They can relate to you more, which may or may not be the truth.
HOST: Peace building begins with empathy, seeing one another fully even across steep differences. It's a lesson that Kevin Malone, now an attorney and teacher himself, learned the hard way.
Years ago, back in middle school and high school, he was often the target of bullying, but those early experiences became the testing ground for the values. His mother, Sarah had taught him compassion, self-control, and emotional fluency.
Kevin: Yeah. I think the end result of certainly all the bullying that I experienced in middle school and high school is that it was driven by insecurity and jealousy.
The, the lesson, I think, is to really have sympathy for people who are in pain and are. Not prepared to bring kindness and have the confidence. I think understanding that the world is like a scary and intimidating place for many people and that many people who are engaging in bullying and bullying activities, which includes as adults, you know, it's not like bullying ends in childhood or again, corporate law firm.
There's plenty of bullies. I think the key, particularly for children is to. Understand that the person committing the bullying is often suffering in the wrong way and maybe deserves more sympathy than anger, but that doesn't mean that you should be steamrolled. I think that like in the case in question, I sort of tried to handle it myself for quite a while and then ultimately did go to school administration myself and made my own complaint.
Then with school-based facilitation expressed myself to this person, these people who's a couple of guys, and it just totally wrecked them. They were just like completely, about two years later, they were all like friends of mine. We became friends in the sense that I came through the other side with even more esteem in their eyes.
It helped them. Transform in the process and it was a stressful and really unpleasant experience for me personally, but I ended up coming away from it much more confident in my own ability to manage conflict.
HOST: That was Kevin Malone. Remembering lessons that have stayed with him since high school about empathy perspective and the quiet strength it takes to meet hostility with understanding.
It's a reminder that peace work doesn't always happen on a world stage. Sometimes it begins in a hallway, a classroom, or a conversation that changes how we see each other. For many of our guests, that commitment to empathy has carried into their professional lives. Finding ways to sustain peace building even when systems around them shift or disappear.
For Theo Dolan, it means finding ways to hold onto purpose, even as the field of peace building has shifted. After two decades of work with the US Institute of Peace and USAID, Theo now serves as senior advisor for BBC Media action, continuing his mission through digital and AI literacy around the world.
Theo Dolan: Well, it's not easy. My whole industry that I've worked in for 20 years is basically gone, and that's a really harsh reality. But I think being a mission-driven person, I think there's a lot of great work going on throughout the US at the local level, and it's just finding how to slot into that and how to participate even as a volunteer.
Um. For example, I do a lot of at universities for classes, for professors whom I know, you know, they'll invite me to address their class about digital and media literacy or how to combat MIS and disinformation in a certain context. So I do a fair amount of that and that that feels good. So I'm lucky enough to be working for a European organization that has really focused on.
On these issues as well. Even though BBC media action is not ostensibly a peace building organization, it still has a lot of overlapping, thematic areas that I've worked in and can help them on, so that, that feels gratifying. Still having some. Some value in the space of the, my point about US organizations, there are a lot of great local organizations, but they're generally smaller.
So it's kind of ironic that the bigger budgets for, for this sort of peace building work are in, uh, other countries. But we urgently need this work ourselves, right here in our own backyard. But the organizations are small, smaller the funding levels. Are much less. And so I think that's something that a lot of the, for example, the private philanthropies are discussing, you know, what do we do?
How do we fill that gap? Not just in peace building, but in supporting democracy and other areas in the, that sort of human rights and governance rubric.
HOST: Like many who devote their lives to this work, Theo finds sustenance in connection to students, colleagues, and community. The same spirit that guides Antoinette tough more than a decade after her courage stopped a school shooting in Atlanta.
Antoinette's faith remains her anchor. It's what brought her back to the same district to keep watch over the next generation and help them feel safe.
Antoinette Tuff: When you face AK 47 500 rounds, you can't do nothing but have faith if you didn't have it and come out because we see now how many times since my shooting.
I mean, school shootings and community shootings we have that people don't come out. It used to be a time where it was like you see all of the older people passing away, right? But they're living out longer than their children. And so we are now in this age now where you got parents burying their kids, where before it was the opposite.
And so you can't go back and look at all of that stuff, but you gotta go back and say, what? What am I supposed to do this day? How can I make a difference in somebody's life this day? So as my faith gotten stronger, absolutely. I realize that I'm not the same person. I don't try to respond to things like I used to.
I realize today that emotions don't make money and it don't make good decisions. So I try to make sure that I keep my emotions out of any decision I need to make in my personal life or in my business, or in my job. Right now, I'm back in the school district where the gunman help me hostage. I came to this school because my kids were in, my program feeds into this middle school.
So when the pandemic came, I was living in Dallas, Texas. The parents called me scared and they said, tough. You saved our kids once before, and I know you can do it again. Can you please pack your bags up and move back here to Atlanta and be in this school so I can feel safe for my kids to stay in school?
So guess what I did? I packed my bags up. I came back to the school district after being out of it for eight years, just to be able to have my kids feel safe. They have all come through the school that I'm at and I have put a hedge or protection over them so when they come, they know they in this school or whatever's going on, they come back to me right here.
HOST: For Antoinette that faith isn't just something she carries, it's something she practices. Day by day prayer, she says is what keeps her grounded in the face of tragedy and injustice, and reminds her that peace starts from within.
Antoinette: I would say for me, I start, everybody starts their day off different, right?
So for me, I start my day off in pray, I start my day off in meditation. I start my day off on the prayer line every morning with people I have never seen in a day in my life. All I can do is recognize their voice. They off from all over the world. I start my day off with prayer and meditation, and the reason why I do that is because when things come right and they come up against you, because we know things are gonna come, right?
There's no day that's gonna be the same as the next day, right? Or the day before. So for me, I try to make sure that I'm in prayer and all that because it helps me to ground mentally. And so I always tell myself that the devil can't hit a moving target no matter what it is. And as long as I keep moving, he can't get me.
Right. And so sometimes in those days, in those moments when it feels like it's up and down and like, you know, we look at these things that are going on now in our world, right? And you say, okay, you know, you got unemployment, you got homelessness, you got all kind of things that are going on, right? What's those things going on then?
A little bit, but not to the magnitude of what we see now. Right? But you still gotta ask yourself, what am I gonna do in these moments right now? And so it goes back just like that, ding, you just heard it was, which was right on time, right? That ding says it's now change. Time to change. And so every ding in your life, it's a moment for you to change the next one.
And what I realize is that every moment is subject to change and I can change it the way I wanna change it.
HOST: Antoinette Tuff’s faith and her return to serve the same school community that once almost faced tragedy show how peace work can take root and continue to grow even in the hardest places. That same steady commitment showing up day after day, year after year is something Sarah and Kevin Malone have lived to.
When we first met them, Kevin was a teenager learning to communicate without violence. Today, their bond has deepened into a friendship built on mutual trust, one that still reflects the principles they shared with us more than two decades ago.
Kevin: I think that like when I became an actual adult and like my parents and I now have what I think is like a really rich and wonderful friendship and like bi-directional support relationship that.
I think is like the envy of like many of my, the people in my life, they're just like amazed at the sort of health of the relationship I have with my parents. And I don't know, that would've been the case if they had been like, you're, what you're doing is so cool when it was totally not like I was a high school kid.
Everything is lame and dumb. It's in some ways good to actually have this, have the standards of an adult. To think that kids are wasting their time and doing stuff that's not productive. 'cause those kids will probably think that when they're adults, or at least they should. My friends who like stayed in their high school sense, have really struggled as adults in this society.
I think the way I feel about it now, I wouldn't tell my parents, you should know everything about what the actual drug and drinking pressures are, what the actual conduct of people's like behavior is and the sort of social values that I'm grappling with. I don't think now that it's like important for them to know that.
I think it's important for them to know what they want me to be, and that's so I, I retrospectively retract my high school commentary.
HOST: His mom, Sarah says that kind of trust doesn't just happen. It's something parents have to practice. Learning when to guide and when to let go.
Sarah Malone: The hardest thing as a parent is letting go and realizing that you can't be.
Helicopter parent successfully. It's just not gonna happen. If you are a helicopter parent, your kiddo's just gonna resent you and find ways around it. Um, very early on, I remember when he was still in grade school, he wanted to walk from the farm where we lived, into the town by himself, on the dirt roads with a backpack.
This was pre-cellphone time. And I thought I was kind of scared to let him do that, but I thought if I don't let him do that, he says, he's saying, you know, I want this level of independence. So I gave him the quarter or whatever it was to call me from the payphone when it got to the top, and I knew how long it would take him to walk it.
And I have to say it was a bit of a nail-biter for me to let him go, but he did and he got there and he called me and it was fine. So it's like, as a parent, we, there are times where we have to sit on our hands, bite our tongue or what have you, and let them go. And, um, so I, I knew that there were gonna be things out there that I had no idea about.
I'm planning out about them still now, these things. She said, what? And I go, oh, just, well, but then really helped when he went off to the Peace Corps, for example, and we were so far away and could not see him for a whole year. We finally went. But um, yeah, it's just, it's learning how to respect the child's opportunity to spread their wings in smaller ways when they're younger and then bigger ways when they're older.
Because ultimately it's a no-win proposition. If you're gonna be a helicopter parent, the child has to spread their wigs and find their own way. Yeah. And you just hope that it, that what you've given them as a foundation is enough to help them steer their own. Safe course and safe doesn't mean without trouble, without problems and hiccups.
Safe means having a skillset to be able to navigate those rough waters when they come because they're well.
HOST: From faith and family to culture and community, each of these peace builders has found a way to keep showing up to stay rooted in what matters most. And those roots have grown because when peace endures, it spreads through. Every student mentored, every story told, every life changed. For Theo Dolan, one of the clearest signs of that ripple came from a youth peace building TV series he helped create in Iraq.
The show was called Salam Shabab. Which means peace youth.
It brought together teenagers from across sectarian and ethnic lines, Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurds to solve challenges together, onscreen and off.
Theo: They're doing amazing things and I'd like to think that we had some small part through Salaam Shabab and helping them become the young adults that they are.
And I'll give you one example, which is my absolute favorite example. So there was a. Young Shia boy from Solder City in Baghdad, which was the largest slum in Baghdad. His name was Sajad. And Sajad was a graffiti artist and he was sometimes chased through the streets by the local militias 'cause they didn't want him doing his art when he came to the filming, the first season of Salm Shabab.
He thought himself as, as kind of this player and he, you know, flirted with the girls and, and was kind of a, a troublemaker, not in a bad way, but just kind of a troublemaker. And, but he was a really talented artist and it turned out that when his team won. The first season of Salaam Shabab. His eyes were completely opened to what this meant for him as an individual, and he ended up coming back the following season as a mentor for other youth, and he built some of the sets on the show himself because he's such a brilliant.
Creative person and he painted some of the backdrops on the sets and helped some of the youth move through the show because it was not always easy. And later he went to the Fine Arts Academy in Baghdad and got his creative arts degree. And is to this day, as far as I know, still exhibiting his work through Baghdad.
He had some very large scale. That was on display in Baghdad and, and is, is by all accounts, a really successful visual artist. So that's one of my favorite stories from Salaam Shabab.
HOST: For Theo, stories like Sajad prove that even in the most divided places, imagination and dialogue can create common ground and that same power to lift up young people to help them see a different path forward drives Antoinette tough every day.
After stopping a gunman after school in 2013, Antoinette built a nonprofit called Kids on the Move for Success. She stayed with many of those students for years, guiding them from elementary school through high school, college, and beyond.
Antoinette: Yes, I had this one little girl, her dad is sick, and so her mom was in and out of relationships and so she came up when she was in middle school, her mom got married and she was just like her and the dad didn't get along.
And so she called me. She's like, I don't know what to do. And I was like, always remember what I told you is that you build your own future, so stay focused. So she said, okay, Ms. Step, I'm gonna stay focused. I'm gonna stay focused. So she graduated high school. Top of her class, she did the band and all of that.
And so what I do with my kids, I take them on STEM educational showcases. I do them in the school and I take them to STEM showcases and college tours. And I do it with my kids in, in elementary. So by the time I get the middle and high school, they would know. And so she was one of those children that was with me in elementary going to the STEM Fest, going to see what she wants to do, going to see what that looks like.
And so for me, I was able to take all of that for her. Allow her to see it. And so she was able to go back and be able to say, I can do this. And right now, today, she's in her third year as an engineer. One life at a time, a child who discovers she's capable of more, a teenager who learns that peace is possible, a community that begins to heal.
HOST: Before we close, we asked our guests to share a few words of advice, reflections they carry forward in their peace building work and thoughts they hope might resonate with you.
Sarah Malone: I think it's extremely important during the early, early years to provide a sound foundation of love and security. Um, I have a friend who's a psychological, uh, a, a therapist and she had said at one point, um, with an infant.
If you hold the infant, you respond. When the infant cries, you don't let them cry it out. What you essentially are teaching that child is your needs are heard and they will be met. I hear you. I see you. I really am with you. And boy did I subscribe to that. Um, from the very beginning. I remember, uh, Kevin had colic.
There was one day as a very young infant. He cried for eight hours straight. And I just tell him the whole time and rocked. 'cause I thought, he's just not gonna go through this alone. I'm gonna be with him. And, um, so I think I'd say that to a, a parent of a newborn is. You can't, you can't spoil a new baby.
Just holding and caring and letting that child know that their needs are gonna be met.
Theo Dolan: I would say to start at the local level, see how you can participate very locally, maybe through your church or through your school or through your library, and see if you can take some small steps, because that can grow into larger steps, whether it's just volunteering at the food bank or you know, taking that, that media literacy class at the library.
Things like that are good. I think a lot of it is just making sure that we collectively, you and, and me and the local partners, we continue to produce more and better content. 'cause that part of it is just about flooding the zone. The bad guys, you know, the malign actors are doing that, so we need to. Use the same tactics to flood the zone with really good pro-social peace building content, pro-democracy content, all of that.
And that's, that should be our job. We should be doing that, I think a lot better. But I think it's, it's definitely possible and something we need to continue to work at.
Valerie Kie: As a mother of a, of a brown son, an indigenous son, like it matters that my son sees himself represented in classrooms, in the curriculum, in his teachers and his leaders.
I want that for all kids, you know, and I hope that we can work towards a future. We're, we're all understanding each other's differences and see those not as threats, but as, you know, enhancements, um, again, like going back to the text of braiding sweetgrass, you know, there's teachings in there that, you know, make a better planet, make us better human beings.
Um, and it's not to say one is better than the other. Um, it's just like we have so much to value when we listen and understand everybody rather than like focus on our divisions and differences. And so yeah, I just, I just continue to ask people to advocate for, for the DEI work, that really means a lot of our, our black and brown students will be able to have equal footing, um, and be able to define success for themselves in their communities.
Kevin Malone: Growing up in an environment where you're like forced to really confront inequity and the. Good fortune that you have. I think really that shaped my, that shaped me more than the sort of bullying that I had to deal with later. For me, the virtue of kindness, I think is the most important thing to have kids really adopt in early elementary school and really having that sort of empathy for others.
Antoinette Tuff: And one thing I'm gonna share with everyone is just to tell you that no matter what it looks like and no matter what it feels like you are on target for where you're supposed to be. So while you in your today, I always tell everybody, God is in your tomorrow. He's gonna make sure that every need is met, everyone is fulfill, and every desire is satisfied in our lives.
But one thing that's good about it, and I have to remind myself that when you see people that are going through, always tell myself, God says he's never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread. He's gonna always take care of us. So just keep moving and knowing that it's gonna be well,
HOST: Those were the voices of Theo Dolan, Valerie Kie, Antoinette Tuff, and Sarah and Kevin Malone. In revisiting these voices, we've heard how piece work keeps evolving and so do the people who live it. Theo Dolan, finding new ways to build understanding through media. Valerie Kie, helping young people reclaim language, identity, and balance.
Antoinette Tuff turning tragedy into purpose for the Next Generation. And Sarah and Kevin Malone showing how a family's practice of empathy can ripple outward for decades. Their stories remind us that peace isn't a single moment. It's a practice that grows, adapts, and endures. To find out more about our guests, go to peace talks radio.com.
And while you're there, explore our full archive of programs dating back to 2003. Subscribe to our newsletter and if you can make a donation to help keep these conversations on the air. Support for Peace Talks Radio comes from listeners like you and the Albuquerque Community Foundation Ties Fund, as well as KUNM at the University of New Mexico.
Nola Daves Moses is our executive director, Ali Adelman composed and performs our theme music. For co-founders, Paul Ingles and Suzanne Kryder, and all of us at Peace Talks Radio, I'm Jessica Ticktin. Thanks for listening and for helping us create a more peaceful world. One story at a time.
